The Paston Treasure, the picture contains images of gold and silver, exotic objects, musical instruments, fruits and flowers, a lobster, a monkey and a parrot, in addition to portraits of a young girl and an African youth.

Last week, the Maids Head Hotel in Norwich launched a claim to be the oldest hotel in the UK. Dating from the twelfth century, the general manager of the hotel, Christine Malcolm, hopes to stimulate a debate on which actually is the oldest hotel.

VisitEngland looks at the growing trend for literature lovers to travel the nation in search for their favourite authors’ home towns and the places where they drew their inspiration from to create their bestselling novels and plays

Very flat, Norfolk wrote Noel Coward. Norwich isn’t. It’s hilly in places and full of cobbled interlocking lanes. But it’s a city that you can visit comfortably on a day trip as part of a wider beach or broads holiday in Norfolk.
At the railway station there is a rack of tourist brochures but the main tourist office is to be found in the Forum in the middle of the city. That has a wide selection but also pick up the Norwich Map visit and shop brochure which has coupon discounts off some of the attractions.

It doesn’t seem that it has been 25 years since the Greek actress, Melina Mercouri, and the French culture minister of the time, Jack Lang jointly conceived of the idea of having, each year, a European Capital of Culture. Starting tomorrow, the European Union will be celebrating the idea with a conference in Brussels to consider the achievements and what might be done in the future.
This year there are three capitals of culture per year, Essen in Germany, Istanbul in Turkey and Pecs in Hungary. The idea has been copied in the Middle East, where Alexandria in Egypt is this year’s beneficiary, and the Americas where this year Santa Domingo in the Dominican Republic is the winner. As British Tourism Week has ended what next to celebrate tourism? Margaret Hodge our minister for culture, has announced that we will have our own British capital of culture from 2013.

The hotel chain, Jurys, has polled 4,000 Britons to see what they thought were the most unwelcoming cities in the UK. It will probably come as no surprise to you that London was considered to have the worst customer service. People also thought that the locals were ruder than other places. A third regularly didn’t say thank you and over half failed to smile at passers-by. Jurys concluded that this didn’t augur well for us when tourists visit us en masse for the Olympics in 2012.
Is all this a fair accusation at London or indeed, the next most unwelcoming cities of Glasgow, Bradford, Birmingham or Liverpool